The Aids Healthcare Foundation (AHF) Nigeria on Thursday in Abuja unveiled a magazine that focuses on the girl child’s menstrual education and hygiene.
The 26-page comic magazine, produced by the AHF, depicted the challenges that the girl child faces in Nigeria regarding menstrual education and the stigma attached to it in communities across the country.
Globally, nearly 2 billion people menstruate, with 500 million experiencing period poverty. One of the things needed to change the tide is the provision of easily relatable information that can attract attention of young women and girls.
In many communities, taboos prevent open discussion about menstruation, limit access to accurate sexual and reproductive health information, and discourage people from seeking care. Addressing menstrual health must go hand in hand with efforts to normalize periods, which this book is set to achieve.
This book takes readers through some salient issues in menstrual health management, particularly as it concerns access to accurate information and correcting the misinformation which is at the root of the stigma associated with menstruation in our society.
The book provides the basic steps to keeping healthy and well during periods, while also making boys and men allies of menstrual health management.
According to Mr. Steve Aborisade, Senior Advocacy & Marketing Manager, AHF Nigeria, there is need to spread the awareness on menstrual education among the adolescence and young women in the country, especially with a view to removing the stigmatisation that has posed challenges to the campaigns over the years.
“We reckon that the target audience for the comic magazine would find the message in it interesting and easily embrace it for their benefits and they too can help share the message accordingly,” Dr. Aborisade said.
The AHF Nigeria Country Programme Director, Dr. Echey Ijezie, who presided over the launch at the Abuja office, said efforts would be geared towards producing the magazine in many Nigerian languages in order to further broaden the core message to the targeted audience.
“It is imperative to ensure that our target audience are reached in no distant future. We would work with the Federal Ministry of Education and explore the outreaches to use them as education and awareness tools,” Dr. Ijezie said.
Mrs. Osaro Osa-Jarikre of the Child Development Department at the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs, who represented the Minister of Women Affairs, disclosed that the ministry would capture the AHF programmes in its elaborate policy to be launched soon, stressing that the ministry had found the foundation as a worthy partner in furthering the cause of the girl child in Nigeria.
“Our ministry has resolved to carry the AHF along in the various programmes we have designed for the girl child in Nigeria, and we are also ready to offer needed support to the foundation in its quest to upgrade the Nigerian young generation,” Mrs. Osa-Jarikre said.
Among those who attended the magazine launch include Dr. Charity Awunor, Nursing Manager, AHF; Dr. Ugochi Ajaero, State Clinical Coordinator, AHF; Binta Suleiman Jalo, Programme Officer, Kids & Teens Resource Centre, Abuja; Taiwo Ajani of the Lawyers Alert, Abuja; representatives of civil society organisations and members of the Girls Act.
